SOURCE: "Variety in Verse," in National Guardian, May 21, 1962, p. 12.

In the following review of Longshot Pomes for Broke Players, critic and poet McGrath finds Bukowski's wry humor admirable, despite his reservations about the poet's style.

Here's Charles Bukowski's Longshot Pomes for Broke Players. The misspelling in the title will probably cause one set of potential readers to shy off. But there is nothing arch about the book. It is an example of what the Beat was before it fell into holiness and hysteria. While much Beat poetry has gone dead or "commercial," it had in it once something of value which we can see clearly in Bukowski's work. Here is part of "The State of World Affairs from a Third Floor Window" offered as proof.

I am watching a girl dressed in a / light green sweater … / as her dirty white dog sniffs the grass /…. I am upstairs in...